We’ll commemorate World AIDS Day with an in-studio conversation with Kevin Picketts, a local award winning community organizer. And, we’ll follow that with Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation. Plus, as President Obama readies his speech on the Afghan war expansion, Gareth Porter explains why the US could be fueling a major civil war.

“Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

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The presidential elections in Honduras went ahead yesterday despite being shunned by most of the international community, and many Hondurans critical of the June coup. With most of the votes counted, early results show a 52% win for conservative candidate Porfirio Lobo. Military and police presence in and around the capital Tegucigalpa was reportedly high. While the coup regime claimed they were security measures in case ousted President Manuel Zelaya’s supporters caused disruptions, human rights groups asserted that the forces were meant to intimidate Zelaya’s supporters from demonstrating. In fact the day before the election, one man was reportedly shot in the head at a military roadblock in Tegucigalpa as he drove past and is currently in critical condition in the hospital. Meanwhile in the Honduran city of San Pedro …

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Earlier this month, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report warning that California could continue to face multibillion dollar budget deficits for years to come. It projects that the state will face an immediate $20.7 billion dollar deficit in the upcoming 2010-2011 fiscal year. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has until January 10th to present a new spending plan to contend with the continued fiscal woes. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor urged the Governor and state lawmakers to begin working on solutions as soon as possible and cautioned that if no permanent fixes are found, California will face budget deficits of at least $20 billion dollars annually through 2015. The harrowing projections come just four months after an overdue budget was signed by Schwarzenegger on July 28th that attempted to address the …

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One hundred and fifty years ago on November 24th this year, Charles Darwin published his seminal book On The Origin of Species. While Darwin’s concepts of evolution through Natural Selection have become political targets of religious zealots everywhere, his scientific work formed the basis of much of what is known today about genetics, one of humanity’s greatest achievements. For about a century, scientists worked to understand the building blocks of life and heredity. Often seen as one of the most most controversial fields of scientific inquiry, this history has now been written by science writer James Schwartz in his book, “In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA.” Through the lives of a handful of crucial figures, Schwartz tells the often messy story of how gene science came to be …

Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

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This week on Uprising:

* Obama Breaks Promise on Shutting Gitmo Down by January 2010
* Sarah Palin’s Book Filled With Inaccuracies, Alternative Book “Going Rouge” Offers Analysis
* Empire Notes on Sarah Palin and the Right
* What the H1N1 Virus Mutations Mean

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Obama Breaks Promise on Shutting Gitmo Down by January 2010

President Barack Obama acknowledged last week that his administration would not be closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility by January 2010. The previously promised deadline was mandated nearly a year ago as part of a number …

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Note: This program was originally rebroadcast on 11/05/09. Event information is outdated.

Born just three days before the Soviet invasion and occupation of her country, Malalai Joya is in many ways typical of Afghans aged 30 years or younger. They are a generation that has known only war. But in many ways Malalai Joya is an extraordinary person, as her political memoir reveals, risking her life in ways that few would, to break the silence on warlordism, violence, corruption, and occupation. Elected to the Afghan parliament in 2005 Malalai Joya became the youngest member of the body. She was chosen by her people because only months earlier she had publicly condemned the fundamentalist war criminals who were dominating Afghanistan’s new government, with the blessing of the Bush administration. Her outburst had generated international headlines and made her simultaneously …

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” — Frederick Douglass

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The First National Thanksgiving

Back in the day on November 26th, 1789, the United States observed its first formal national Thanksgiving holiday. President George Washington designated the date when he published his “Thanksgiving Proclamation” in the Massachusetts Centinel. The nation’s first President was responding to Congress who sought a “Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer” to be “observed by acknowledging the favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.” Lord knows there have been enough subversive histories over the past months to construct a counter narrative to such grandiose notions of Thanksgiving but if more is needed consider the following: the second informal practice of thanksgiving day, which predated Washington’s Proclamation, came to celebrate a joint …

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The Presidential elections slated for this Sunday November 29th are going ahead as planned despite the breaking of a US-sponsored peace accord that was meant to reinstate ousted President Manual Zelaya. The United States and Panama are the only two countries so far to support the elections. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint announced earlier this month that he had assurance from the Obama Administration that “the US will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated.” Meanwhile 25 countries called the Rio Group have declared that they will not recognize any government resulting from the elections if Zelaya wasn’t restored. Zelaya for his part has announced that this late in the game, he will not accept any restitution of his position as he does not …